斯坦贝克的诺贝尔获奖感言

John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. 根据诺贝尔奖 Committee, Steinbeck was awarded this honor "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception.斯坦贝克收到 the award at Stockholm City Hall on Monday December 10th. 其他得奖者包括 the chemist Linus Pauling, who earned the Peace Prize, and James D. 华生，一个分子 biologist who first proposed the double-helix structure of DNA. 

Partial audio recording of Steinbeck’s acceptance speech (1962-12-10)

Steinbeck and professor Maurice Wilkins (Nobel Prize for Medicine) sitting next to each other at the Nobel Prize ceremony in 1962, listening to Doctor Arne Tiselius, 诺贝尔基金会主席.

语音记录

I thank the Swedish Academy for finding my work worthy of this highest honor. 在我 heart there may be doubt that I deserve the Nobel Award over other men of letters whom I hold in respect or reverence—but there is no question of my pleasure and pride 我要拥有它.

It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer scholarly or personal comment 论文学的性质与方向. 然而，我认为这样做会很好 particular time to consider the high duties and responsibilities of the makers of 文学.

Such is the prestige of the Nobel Award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to speak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practiced it 古往今来.

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the 绝望的低卡路里乞丐. 文学和语言一样古老. 它增长 out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. 的 skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. 从一开始， their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.

Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion. 我的伟大的 predecessor, William 福克纳, speaking here, referred to it as a tragedy of universal physical fear, so long sustained that there were no longer problems of the spirit, so that only the human heart in conflict with itself seemed worth writing about. 福克纳, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well as of human weakness. 他知道 that the understanding and the resolution of fear are a large part of the writer's 存在的理由. 这并不新鲜. 作家的古老使命没有改变. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.

Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion 和爱. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally 希望和竞争的旗帜. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in 文学.

的 present universal fear has been the result of a forward surge in our knowledge and manipulation of certain dangerous factors in the physical world. 这是真的 other phases of understanding have not yet caught up with this great step, but there is no reason to presume that they cannot or will not draw abreast. 事实上，它是一部分 of the writer's responsibility to make sure that they do.

With humanity's long, proud history of standing firm against all of its natural enemies, sometimes in the face of almost certain defeat and extinction, we would be cowardly and stupid to leave the field on the eve of our greatest potential victory.

Understandably, I have been reading the life of Alfred Nobel; a solitary man, the 书上说，一个有思想的人. He perfected the release of explosive forces capable of creative good or of destructive evil, but lacking choice, ungoverned by conscience 或判断.

Nobel saw some of the cruel and bloody misuses of his inventions. 他甚至可能 foreseen the end result of all his probing--access to ultimate violence, to final 破坏. Some say that he became cynical, but I do not believe this. 我想他 努力发明一种控制装置——安全阀. 我想他最后只在 人类的思想和精神.

To me, his thinking is clearly indicated in the categories of these awards. 他们是 offered for increased and continuing knowledge of man and of his world—for understanding and communication, which are the functions of 文学. 他们被提供 demonstrations of the capacity for peace—the culmination of all the others.

Less than fifty years after his death, the door of nature was unlocked and we were 面临着可怕的选择. 我们已经篡夺了很多我们曾经拥有的权力 归于上帝. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life and 全世界所有生物的死亡. 危险，荣耀和选择 最终安息于人间. 对他是否完美的考验就在眼前.

Having taken God-like power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and 我们曾经祈求神灵赐予的智慧. 人自己成了我们最伟大的人 危险，也是我们唯一的希望. So that today, saint John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the word, and the word is man, and the word is with man.

——约翰·斯坦贝克(1962)